Picking your favorite city for bicycling the USA TODAY way

USA Today knows that people like to read Top 10 lists, so it creates a lot of them. Currently, the newspaper’s Travel Section is running a reader response poll on the 10 Best U.S. Cycling Towns.

Seattle Space Needle

Former pro cyclist George Hincapie was asked to nominate 20 cities to the list, and readers get to vote for their top city everyday until noon on April 14.

Right now, the leaders are Davis, Calif., Minneapolis, Fort Collins, Colo., Madison, Wis., and Chattanooga, Tenn. All five judged Bicycle Friendly Communities by the League of American Bicyclists.

Nominees

If you care to vote, here are the cities on the list:

Ann Arbor, Mich.;

Asheville, N.C.;

Austin, Texas;

Bend, Ore.;

Chattanooga, Tenn.;

Durango, Colo.;

Gainesville, Fla.;

Greenville, S.C.;

Fort Collins, Colo.;

Madison, Wis.;

Sacramento, Calif.;

Malibu, Calif.;

Minneapolis;

Moab, Utah;

Park City, Utah;

Seattle, Wash.;

Tucson, Ariz.

Naturally, I voted for Seattle, not only because it’s the city that I know best but also for its hundreds of miles of bike lanes and bike trails as well as the active bike culture driven in part by the Cascade Bicycle Club.

As an aside, I find it interesting that George Hincapie was chosen to nominate the 20 cities from which to choose. While his team leader Lance Armstrong is a pariah in the world of cycling, Hincapie is described as “celebrated” and “lauded” in the USA Today piece.

As he admitted to using performance enhancing drugs, he was striped of his winning race results from May 31, 2004, to July 31, 2006. I suppose he didn’t tell Texas-sized lies like Armstrong did.